Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ liking. It would please me greatly if you wore it this evening. Clarence will come to retrieve you at five o’clock.

      Bracing myself for what I might find inside, I unzipped the bag. The dress wasn’t what I had expected—though my expectations weren’t terribly specific. Lifting the length of blush-colored satin, I grudgingly admitted Cyrus had good taste.

      I would normally feel a little silly for being so overdressed, but I liked what I saw when I slipped into the gown and looked myself over in the mirror. The color complimented my blond hair, and though my skin had paled since I’d turned, it wasn’t as obvious against such a delicate shade.

      I usually wasn’t so vain, but I hadn’t gotten dressed up like this since my high school prom, and the sight of myself in something other than a lab coat or jeans enticed me to the mirror. I snuck a pair of diamond earrings from the stash in the armoire and let my hair down, brushing it until it fell in soft waves around my shoulders. I looked so good I would have given myself television privileges just for standing there.

      Now I look like something worth drawing, I thought, and instantly regretted it. After the T-shirt debacle, I’d taken care to hide Nathan’s sketch, but it had felt like burying a dead friend. I wondered what he was doing now. If he missed me. Or if he was just biding his time until he got the chance to kill me.

      I commanded myself to stop thinking of such morose things. Whatever might have begun between Nathan and I was over now. I could continue to cling to the past, or I could try to be happy in my new life.

      Staring in the mirror, I barely recognized myself. In the past, I’d been lonely and unhappy. I’d defined my life by my career, and my heart hadn’t even been in it. I’d had no idea who I was or any plans to find out. But now I had the opportunity. I couldn’t waste it.

      Clarence entered my sitting room just as the clock chimed for the fifth time. His face was somber as he led me down the hallway. We stopped at the large double doors and waited while they were opened from within.

      Cyrus’s rooms were much larger than mine. The parlor boasted a painted ceiling where cherubs looked down from a sunny sky. It was a striking contrast to the marble statues of nude women in the grasps of winged demons that flanked the fireplace.

      Cyrus was seated at a small table in the center of the room. There were no corpses, as promised. Two champagne flutes and a large crystal decanter full of blood were laid out before him. He stood when I entered.

      “Look at you.” His eyes glittered with genuine appreciation. “You’re more beautiful every time I see you.”

      “You look pretty good yourself.” It wasn’t an empty compliment, though anything was better than his pirate outfit from before. He wore a simple, button-down black shirt and black pants, and his hair was tied back. He looked surprisingly modern, and I found it easy to imagine he was a different person from the man who’d wreaked so much havoc in my life.

      Maybe that’s what I’d have to do. Live in denial to stand living at all. But I’d been doing that for far too long already.

      I cleared my throat. “I’m glad to see the leather pants couldn’t make a return appearance.”

      Clearly, he interpreted this as an insult. “I beg your pardon? Leather is very fashionable.”

      “In 1997.” I sat in the chair Clarence pulled out for me and spread my napkin across my lap. “And I must tell you I’m not really big on the whole ‘Satan Goes to Versailles’ vibe you’ve got going on here.” He ignored me and poured some of the blood into my glass. It fizzed slightly as it hit the glass.

      “Let me guess. Poison?” Knowing better than that, I took a sip and let the fluid roll slowly across my tongue, savoring its sweet flavor.

      “Champagne. Think of it as a bloody mimosa.” He laughed at his own joke before he went on. “I thought we had reason to celebrate tonight.” He filled his glass and took a long swallow.

      I eyed him incredulously. “What are we celebrating exactly?”

      A wickedly satisfied smirk stretched across his face. “Your fall from grace.”

      “Hold on there, buddy. I haven’t done anything yet.” I’d learned from past experience that he would try to tempt me, to appeal to the monster in me. I also knew I was more receptive to the possibility now than I had been when he’d tried to lure me before. But he didn’t need to know that. Then again, he probably already did.

      Cyrus took another drink, his eyes never leaving me. “I do like that dress. You’ll have to wear it more often.”

      “I don’t know.” I smoothed my hands over the silky fabric. “When I get the chance, maybe. It’s not really something I can wear around the house.”

      “Why not?”

      I laughed, until I realized he was serious. “Well, I’d feel overdressed, for one.”

      “No one would mention it.” His champagne flute dangled from the tips of his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “It befits your station.”

      I huffed in annoyance. “My station. Because you said you could make me a queen, right?”

      “I can’t make you a queen, that was a bit of a fib. More like a princess.” He made the remark without a hint of humor. “You’ve read The Sanguinarius?”

      “Only about half of it. My copy was lost when my apartment burned down.”

      “A pity. So, if I mentioned the name Jacob Seymour, you’d have no idea who I was speaking of?” Cyrus’s eyes were fixed on my face, as if he were trying to register something in my reaction.

      He’d find nothing there. “No clue at all. Why, is he someone important?”

      “Yes, you could say so. He was my father.”

      I didn’t know how to respond, so I merely waited for him to continue.

      “My father was not a powerful man in life. He was an old man with two wives in the grave and ten grown children when he was turned. We were serfs, what you call peasants now. We farmed land owned by a wealthy lord and tithed most of our profit to the Crown.”

      “In England?” I took a sip from my glass, enjoying the effects of light-headedness from the champagne and satiation from the blood mixed with it.

      Cyrus nodded. “The vampire who sired my father did so on the condition that he use all the powers gifted to him to grow strong and overcome those who would rule him. Father took it quite literally. First, he killed the noble family who enslaved us. Then he killed and fed from his sire, and finally, one by one, he sought out those of our kind already in existence. The oldest, the strongest, the most fearsome. My father slew them all. He drank their blood and stole their power.

      “And then, of his seven living sons, he chose the one he felt was the most ruthless and calculating, and he sired him.”

      Cyrus straightened in his chair, pride transforming his face. “And while my brother slept, on the first day of his new vampire life, I killed him and stole his blood.” He paused, and his brows furrowed as if he were trying to remember something. “Then I stabbed him in the heart and took a handful of his ashes to my father to show him what I’d done. That I deserved the place СКАЧАТЬ